• These Puritans are different from the original settling Puritans
-Winthrop was all about Christian love, virtue, and happiness: the Christian God is a god of love and forgiveness
-Now: they are all about punishment sorrow, and sin
-Hawthorne says that Winthrop and the original Puritans had hoped for a Utopia
-However, utopia means “no place” and is impossible to achieve
- This society is the opposite of utopian perfection
• Rosebush represents Hester: wild and beautiful
-How it emerged:
1) It was leftover from a time before when land was all forests
2) It sprang from Anne Hutchinson’s footsteps- she had been a prisoner who was ahead of her time. She tried to give women more power in a patriarchal society and argued that people don’t need ministers for a relationship with God.
-The language conveys:
-It is precious and valuable: its flowers are “gems”
-It is “wild” – natural and not associated with man (unlike the man-made Puritan landscape)
-Nature is kind and sympathetic and has a heart – opposite of the Puritans
-The language also shows bias on the part of the narrator: